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Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929

Boone Papers. Chapter on President Coolidge from the Memoirs of His Physician, Joel T. Boone.

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(Taped 6-13-64)

I was told one time of an incident that took place in Governor Coolidge's room in the Adams House, Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived, I understand, whenever in Boston during his terms in the lower e House of the State Legislature, in the Senate, and while he served as Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts. Mrs. Coolidge visited him in Boston at the Adams House from time to time, but she kept the home fires burning in their duplex inexpensive home in Northampton on Massasoit Street. She had two youthful sons to raise, lead, and guide, and the Coolidges were not disposed to transplant their youthful sons during their adolescent periods of life. Mr. Coolidge was perfectly willing to make the trips back and forth between Northampton and Boston as often as was necessary, to stay as long as necessary in the house in order to execute his official duties.

The last night of the campaign when Mr. Coolidge ran for Governor of Massachusetts, Mrs. Coolidge was in Boston with him and they received returns of the election from hour to hour in their rooms at the Adams House. As the evening wore on of election night, one of the assistant managers of the Coolidge campaign came to Lieutenant Governor Coolidge's room and gave him encouraging news of the trend of the election. Of course, those in the room were very elated. Mrs. Coolidge thought there should be real evidence of gratitude for the message that this official had brought, so she whispered to Mr. Coolidge, asking him to give this aide a drink. Mr. Coolidge scowled, I understand, but after some urging by his wife, he pulled

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a small suitcase from under his bed, placed it on top of the bed, reached into his pocket, took out his keys, unlocked the suitcase, dug down under some clothes, and brought forth a small flask. He uncorked it and then proceeded to pour out a portion of liquor and handed it to his political aide, who, I am sure, was grateful, as he had been working hard gathering up information on the election for Mr. Coolidge.

As midnight approached and it was known that the election {begin inserted text}tabulations{end inserted text} of the election had been completed, the manager for Mr. Coolidge of the campaign entered his suite and announced that Mr. Coolidge had been elected Governor of Massachusetts. Of course, everyone was thrilled. Mrs. Coolidge urged upon Mr. Coolidge to give his manager libation, showing his gratitude for the report that he had brought to him. After a bit, having put the suitcase under the bed following his dispensing of some hospitality to the assistant manager of the campaign, he pulled it out from under the bed once more and placed it on top of the bed. He repeated his actions in drawing his keys out of his pocket, unlocking the suitcase, reaching down under the clothes that were in the suitcase, and getting out the flask. With that, again he uncorked it and poured out a drink and handed it to the campaign manager. When that had been completed, Mr. Coolidge started to put the flask away and lock up the suitcase. Mrs. Coolidge went beside him and said, "Do give (referring to the assistan ? {begin inserted text}t{end inserted text} manager who had come in earlier in the evening) him a drink." The President frowned at Mrs. Coolidge and said in his nasal twang, "He had his," corked the flask and put it back in the suitcase, locked the suitcase, and put the suitcase under the bed.

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It was told to me that when Calvin Coolidge was graduated from Amherst College, his father expressed a wish or made the suggestion, I don't know which it was, that he go into the drugstore business. Son Calvin was desirous of becoming a lawyer. He said to his father with a tone of finality he would not be a liquor dispenser. Apparently, in those days drugstores were a source of alcoholic stimulants supply. Calvin had his way, and while his father could not afford to send him to law school, he became a student of law in the firm headed by Judge Hammond of Northampton, and no doubt was a very apt student and applied himself industriously during his legal training and as he set forth later to practice law.

Having the privileged opportunity to become very intimately acquainted in later years with President Coolidge, I believe in his early law years and as a student of law he learned how to listen, study, and to observe without many times giving voice to his own opinions, not one given to popularize himself by trying to attract people to him or to encourage them in any way to speak complimentarily or fraternally of him.

He apparently started his early life to be very conservative with his use of words.

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Mr. Bruce Barton, writing in "The American Review of Reviews" sometime after Calvin Coolidge became President of the United States, made some observations I learned as I had my intimate relationships with President Coolidge in accord with my own observations. Bruce Barton said at one part of the article on Calvin Coolidge:

"The silence of Calvin Coolidge goes back beyond his birth. His grandfather managed existence with a minimum of words; his father, who bears the title of Colonel by virtue of service on the staff of the Governor of Vermont, is a sort of local sage {begin inserted text}to{end inserted text} whose tested integrity and laconic judgments the neighborhood gladly submits. (The neighborhood being Plymouth Notch and possibly wider areas of Vermont.) The Coolidges are like the hills from which they spring,--strong, firm, but lacking in the showy qualities of the more pretentious mountains. They are modest men.... The time has come {begin inserted text}times{end inserted text} , he said, required that men should 'walk humbly'. The words are very revealing, there is the flavor of Cromwell about them, of Washington and the Adamses--men who kept their own counsel, lived simply, {begin inserted text}shrank{end inserted text} sh ar from thrusting themselves forward, and were not ashamed to be regarded as humble and imperfect instruments of a greater Power.

"The majority of his classmates at Amherst knew Coolidge as merely a lean, red headed country boy, with a pronounced Yankee drawl and a shrewd, whimsical sense of humor. (I found that he had a very keen sense of humor and I became very well familiar with the Yankee drawl and brevity of speech.).... The class cast its ballots at Commencement time (that's at Amherst), Dwight W. Morrow was voted
a

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the man 'most likely to succeed in life'. He Justified that prediction by becoming one of the partners in {begin inserted text}of{end inserted text} J.P. Morgan. Coolidge received only one vote--but that one vote was Morrow's. Somehow each of the two strong men recognized instinctively the fiber of the other."

{begin inserted text}When{end inserted text} Mr. Coolidge became President of the United States, he sought advice many times from his classmate, Dwight Morrow. {begin inserted text}When{end inserted text} The opportunity presented itself President Coolidge was very desirous to utilize the services, and the very able services, of his friend, Dwight Morrow, in government. Mr. Morrow, I had heard, was very loath to give up his banking vocation. President Coolidge's desires prevailed and finally Dwight Morrow was appointed Ambassador to Mexico, where he did a superb job for his country. He and President Coolidge were very fast friends with their college days as background, each going into different fields of service and each rich contributors to their country with the passing of years. {begin inserted text}Para.{end inserted text} I had the pleasure of knowing Mr. and Mrs. Dwight Morrow and admired them greatly. They were both great benefactors of their respective colleges, his Amherst, and hers Smith College. Later on in life when there was a vacancy in the President of Smith College, now largest women's college in the United States, to which she had given a great deal of time, rich energy and financial support, she was urged to assume the Presidency on a temporary basis of that renowned college. She acquitted herself, I have learned many times, most admirably in the Presidential chair of that college. The Morrows became father and mother-in-law of the famous Charles A. Lindbergh.

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Bruce Barton narrates in the w {begin inserted text}a{end inserted text} rticle to which I have referred and from which I have excerpting portions , " o {begin inserted text}O{end inserted text} ffice associates of Calvin Coolidge and acquaintances wondered how a young man so utterly lacking in self-advertisement could hope to succeed in the law. But there was no question about Coolidge's knowledge, or his capacity for work; and gradually men conceived the notion on {begin inserted text}that{end inserted text} one who was so silent about his own affairs would probably exercise discretion in theirs. So his practice grew, and his neighbors began electing him to office {begin inserted text}s{end inserted text} which nobody wanted especially, and continued to elect him to better offices, since he invariably made good."

I had reasons to learn to know these qualities of President Coolidge among many others which shall be narrated in these memoirs.

While I was not related to some of the incidents as related by Bruce Barton, they are so similar and so descriptive of the man, Calvin Coolidge, as I knew him that they are worthy of restating by me, as, of course, narrated originally by Bruce Barton. The similarity to two that I shall restate here and give credit for the origin of statement to Bruce Barton are the one I narrated of Mr. Stearns' first meeting with Mr. Coolidge in his office when Mr. Coolidge was a State Senator. To quote from Bruce Barton's article in "The American Review of Reviews":

"A very wealthy woman came to Coolidge when he was Governor. She was interested in the reform of prisons and urged him to accompany her to one of them in her car. He politely refused. A few days later, when the train stopped at the town where that prison was located, a quiet man climbed down from the smoker, stepped in the

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station hack, and drove up to the prison door.. There was no item in the program and management which escaped the Governor's pointed interest. The measures which that influential woman wanted taken were inaugurated without delay. . . ."

Then to quote another {begin inserted text}portion{end inserted text} of Bruce Barton's:

"To do the job and to let the credit take care of itself, this was the rule of Coolidge. As more and more men began to understand it, the confidence of the common folk of Massachusetts grew; so that thousands who had never seen him began to feel a friendliness toward this unassuming man. {begin inserted text}His{end inserted text} majorities were the envy of the professional politicians. He made few speeches, but those were extraordinary both in substance and form. . . . Elevated no powerful individuals, made no exaggerated claims or promises, kissed no babies, and spent no money. Every election found him more strongly entrenched.

"'Tell me the secret', a friend demanded. 'You are always on the job {begin inserted text}at{end inserted text} in the Statehouse. How do you find time to keep in touch with your constituents? What do you do to assure your re-election?'

"'Well, I sort of let nature take her course', Coolidge drawled.

"'Oh, come now,' his friend laugh t ed, 'that may do for popular consumption, but I know that nature doesn't look after the re-election of politicians.'

"Coolidge sat silent, puffing away on a stogie. 'Maybe I have nudged nature now and then,' " he said."

Like the Quakers {begin inserted text}(making their only){end inserted text} speak when the Spirit moves them, but I am sure the Spirit is nudged many times for them to speak.

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I particularly like a reference Bruce Barton made to the Boston police strike when Mr. Coolidge was Governor. It gave him tremendous publicity throughout the Nation. Barton stated that he talked with Governor Coolidge after the strike about it. Then Bruce Barton quotes President {begin inserted text}Governor{end inserted text} the statement Governor Coolidge made:

"People think that a decision like that i is difficult," he said. "It isn't. Big decisions are easy, because you can see so clearly what ought to be done. It's the smaller decisions that make troubles, where there is so much right on both sides."

I saw Mr. Coolidge many times thrashing out in his mind problems to which he must give a decision. I am sure he applied the same philosophy and concepts actions in many of those decisions that he had to make as he did the way he described his decision to Bruce Barton referable to the Boston police strike. I am sure he always entertained the belief that "big decisions are easy, because you can see so clearly what ought to be done. It's the smaller decisions that make trouble, when there is so much right on both sides." {begin inserted text}Had{end inserted text} As I have {begin inserted text}had{end inserted text} those words before me when I was a physician to President Coolidge, I think there were periods that I would have understood better the workings of his mind.

President Coolidge once very properly said (take this from Bruce Barton's article): "Good government cannot be found on the bargain counter."

Following President Harding's death and burial in Marion, Ohio, when I returned to Washington I picked up threads of my interrupted

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